Кэролайн Черри - Fortress in the Eye of Time

He knew a Place along the Road, then, that offered him water, if he began to be desperate — clean water, as pure as that from the cistern at Ynefel, and it occurred to him that he could stay by it and not be thirsty today; at the very least, he could sit for a while and rest. He could let his head down against the mossy stones. He could shut his eyes a moment in the sunlight, knowing he could drink again any time he wished.

He found a dark gray nothing behind his eyelids. It shadowed with wings like the wings of his birds, quiet, dizzy movements, like their gliding in the sky, and he rode that for a precious few moments, content to be rocked in it, absorbed in it.

“Owl?” he asked then of that vision, remembering that Owl had followed him; and he saw the loft again, but they were only silly pigeons that came and went, and their voices lulled him deeper into sleep.

How strange, he thought, to dream of falling asleep. That was twice asleep. And very, very deep this sleep within a sleep seemed to be, layer upon layer of it folding him over like thick quilts on a chill night.

He looked for Mauryl in the grayness of the loft, then. He looked for Mauryl, but he saw only birds walking to and fro. He saw only dust on the boards, and there was a gap in the boards of the dividing wall that the storm had made, toward which he knew he ought not to look. He did not know why he ought not now, when he had ventured to explore the other side of that gap back at Ynefel. But it seemed to him that the gap in that barrier was a source of dreadful harm.

He hid in the loft, instead, and something came searching for him, something he could not put a shape to, or understand. He thought it was a Shadow. He tucked himself deep within the nook he had found between the rafters and hoped for it to go away.

It brushed by him. It came back again. It seemed he was not in the loft at all, but lying on moss-covered stone, among the leaves, and for some reason a deep leaf-shadow was on him, protecting him from the presence that paced along the Road. Looking for him, it was, he thought. He did not know what else it might be looking for.

The Book burned the skin of his waist where he had tucked it, as that presence paused beside his broad daylight hiding-place. It was not at all the loft now that sheltered him, and it was not the birds coming to and fro that made that strange sound, it was a patter of rain drops falling on the forestʼs discarded leaves.

And in the awareness of that sound the presence he had felt so strongly had ceased to be there.

Something loomed above him instead, spreading wings between him and the sky. It was Owl, out by daylight, perched on a leafless branch and peering fiercely off into the distances up the Road as Owl would do — Owl suspected things, and he seemed to suspect this one intensely.

“What do you see, Owl?” he asked, awake, as he thought, with his heart beating harder than a dream warranted. “What was it?”

But Owl flew off down the Road with a sudden snap of his wings and gave him not a second glance.

He was still afraid, then — of what, he had no idea, but the Place no longer seemed safe. Neither did the Road behind him, now that Owl had fled it in such haste. But he gathered himself up immediately and set out walking, following Owl.

The notion of danger behind him in the endless woods — and the notion of Ynefel also lying behind him and at the heart of the woods — was a new thought to him: the Road had at least one end, and he had come from there. The water was a Place. So he began to form in his mind then the notion that the Road might equally well go to Places, as doors did, and that to must be at least as important as from .

Then he thought that tomorrow or this evening must at least be at least as substantial as yesterday — and that tomorrow and toward a yet-to-find Place was where Mauryl had wanted him to go. Owl had gone, showing him the way in great urgency.

So there was somewhere to be, and somewhere to have been, and somewhere yet urgently to go, which Mauryl had assigned him. And his slowness had made him almost fall into the Shadow. It was another mistake to have delayed at all to rest — a mistake to have been wandering as much as walking, not knowing he had a place to be, not, he had to admit to himself, really wanting to follow Maurylʼs instruction, not wanting to be anywhere but Ynefel, because he had conceived of nowhere else despite the Names that Mauryl had told him. Of course there were other Places. Mauryl had tried to tell him, but like rain off the shingles, it had slid right off his mind, as everyday sights did, until the Word was ready to come. Or — and this one had done that — a Word would come partway, and he would go on attaching more and more pieces of it all day or for days after, until a new and startling idea came to him with all its various pieces attached.

Now he feared that other Place he was going as possibly one that would take him in and close off to him forever the Place that he had been. He refused to imagine a world in which Mauryl was gone for good. It terrified him, such a Place, which could exist, now that he began to think about such things as tomorrow, and tomorrow after that.

Owlʼs precipitate flight frightened him. It drove him to desperate haste, far beyond his ordinary strength.

And when the dark came down again in his walking on the Road he was afraid to sit down and sleep, hungry and thirsty and miserable as he was, because the shadows were abroad. He kept walking until he was staggering with exhaustion and light-headed with hunger.

“Owl?” he begged of the formless dark. “Owl, can you hear me?”

It was the hour for Owl to be abroad. But perhaps Owl was busy. Or ignoring him, as obstinately as Mauryl would, when he interrupted Mauryl at his ciphering, and if he persisted, then Maurylʼs next answer — and, he suspected, Owlʼs — would not be polite at all.

But he wished, oh, he wished Owl would come back. There were clearly sides to the Road which went on unguessably far, forest into which Owl could go, but he dared not venture. The air as he walked grew cold and the woods grew frightening. There were stirrings and movements in the brush where by day he had heard nothing. The place felt bad, the way the stairs and balconies of the keep, safe and familiar by day, had felt dangerous when the Shadows were free to move about.

No Owl, no Mauryl, no shelter and no door to lock. There was no safety for him tonight, and nowhere to stop. He sat down only when morning came sneaking into the woods, and he sat and hugged his knees up to his chest for warmth, his head both light and aching. He had no idea where he was, except beside the Road. He had no idea yet where he was going, or how far he had already come. The world remained measureless to him on all sides now.

And when he waked he was so light-headed and so miserable he tried eating a leaf from the bushes that sheltered him, but its taste was bitter and foul and made his mouth burn. He wished he had the water he had found yesterday, but there was no food there, he knew that for very certain. So he ate no more leaves, and after a long time of walking his mouth quit burning.

Then his stomach seemed to give up the idea of food at all. He was not quite hungry. He told himself he could keep going — he had gone farther than he had ever thought he could, he was stronger than he had ever thought he was, and miserable as he was, nothing had laid hands on him, nothing had stopped him, nothing had daunted him from Maurylʼs instructions.

“Who?” came from overhead. Owl was back. Owl flew off from him with no time for questions.

Owl intended, perhaps, encouragement, since of Words there were, Owl was not profligate, and Owl asked his question without an answer.